21 May 2010

New Jackass Of The Week: Rand Paul - Tea Party Darling In Kentucky; Says Obama's Criticism Of BP Is "Un-American"

I have to take back an Award of Dishonor which I granted on Brit Hume earlier this week, i.e.,
"The Jackass of The Week Award" from The Watchworld. But I must.

You may remember, Brit Hume, one of Fox News' Sharpies, said this oil leak ain't nothing to worry about, folks. In fact, he cried on air, "Where's the oil?"

To which I replied with another one of my blog posts "Raw Footage of the Gulf of Mexico Catastrophe".

Well along comes this week's Tea Party darling from Kentucky, Rand Paul, who is the Republican nominee for that state's Senate seat. Just when you think Hume's stupid comment cannot be topped, Paul says President Obama's criticism of BP (and I swear I am not making this up) is "un-American." See you for yourself in the video below. Go to about 4:59 into the video and listen to this Kentucky fried politician cry crocidile tears for BP, the multi-national conglomerate which we know ignored one safety violation and warning after another and which has resulted in the deaths of 11 men and the biggest ecological disaster in the history on the United States of America. Or better yet, watch the whole video and watch how George Stephanopolus ask hardball questions about Paul's past comments on the 1964 Civil Rights Act and how Paul stumbles all over himself blaming his past comments as being "distorted" by the liberal media. What an absolute tool of the establishment Rand Paul, Mr. Tea Party, is:




If the good folks of Kentucky elect this man as their Senator, they will get a guy who has been captured on video saying he supports discrimination of businesses to serve whoever they want, who thinks dangerous practices of businesses, such as BP, should be less regulated and not criticized. He is also against minimum wage, which he claims leads to unemployment.

20 May 2010

CBS Releases Extended Video With Mike Williams, Head Electronics Tech On Board Deepwater Horizon Rig

Regular viewers of this blog know that a few days ago I posted "CBS' 60 Minutes: "Deepwater Horizon's Blowout" ...Parts 1 & 2 . . . Plus 7 Extra Parts."

This was a fascinating interview of Mike Williams, an electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon, who painstakingly takes us through the many safety breaches committed by BP. Mike also rivets our attention with his crystal clear memory of what was going on right as gas shot up the pipe, sent the generators for electricity into over drive, and blew out the light bulbs in the ceiling and blew out the screens of his computer monitors. From there, his description of not one, but two 4 inch thick steel safety doors blowing off their big stainless steel hinges and hiting him full on, driving him 35 feet across a room into a wall, just makes this story the most unbelievable survival epic of all time.

Mike had to survive more than two seperate steel doors blasting him, he also tells how he ran to the bridge, confronted the captain that all was lost on his side of the rig, and how he missed three lifeboats which dropped to the ocean floor below without him and two other survivors. What takes place next must be heard in this interview.

That Mike Williams is alive is probably one of the biggest survival stories of all time. That Mike can come back and point his unwavering finger and dead on look into a camera and tell you how many times and how BP disregarded the most basic safety rules will make your anger boil.

Well, with all the videos posted in that last link, we've got a new "extended" 60 minutes video which leaves out some of the "extras" from my last link on Mike's story, but which adds new details.



Watch CBS News Videos Online

For instance in this new video, we learn when Mike got to the bridge where the captain was situated, there were more than a dozen survivors up there. Not only this, in this new video, we learn how an injured and very dazed and confused BP exec had to be prodded to try and push buttons to stop the flow of oil. The BP guy took a minute looking at the breaker box, then he finally punched buttons which should have stopped the flow of oil with a cutoff. Watch Williams' face when he tells you how dumbfounded everyone was in the room when no cutoffs worked.

This is damning evidence that unregulated Capitalism always works in the best interest of consumers. With the Louisiana shoreline being turned into oil covered muck zone, anyone with a conscience knows this is turning into the biggest environmental disaster of all time. May BP pay mightily for its sins!

Watch this latest "extended" video and shake your head at how one major company could have avoided this catastrophe by adhering to common sense safety rules. More unbelievable is how Mike Williams survived hell on earth and is now here to indict pigheaded Capitalists who put profits way ahead of safety.

19 May 2010

Heavy Oil Washes Up Onto Louisiana Marshlands

(Above: Mississippi River Meeting Oil In The Gulf)

As we await analysis of tar balls found on four shores in the Lower Keys, there is news this morning that heavy oil has finally entered Louisiana's environmentally rich marshlands.

The Washington Post carries the story
"Heavy oil reaches Louisiana marshland; tar balls found in Key West".

VENICE, LA. -- A tide of sludgy oil has begun washing into the fringes of Louisiana's coastal marshes, officials said Tuesday, as BP continued to siphon some of the oil gushing from a damaged well on the gulf floor but remained days away from trying to cap the leak.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told Senate committees Tuesday that the company would attempt a "dynamic kill" of the oil well Saturday. That procedure involves pumping thick mud into the well in hopes of blocking the oil.

And hundreds of miles from the Louisiana coast, there was a worrisome discovery: Tar balls, sticky clumps of decayed oil, were found Monday in Key West, Fla. Officials said they were being tested to determine whether they came from the leaking BP well.

But the most ominous news came from south Louisiana, where the Mississippi Delta peters out into the Gulf of Mexico. There, instead of the tar balls that had previously washed ashore from the spill, thick, brown oil was infiltrating the edges of the marshes.

"If I had been standing up, I would have fell to my knees," said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, La., about the moment that he heard the news. Nungesser, whose parish follows the Mississippi out to sea, said the oil had been spotted at places called South Pass and Pass-a-Loutre. "It's our greatest fear."

If these marshes are destroyed by oil, it could mean huge losses for the area's seafood industry and a reduction in Louisiana's already skimpy shield against a hurricane storm surge. "We're finished. We're out of business" if that happens, Nungesser said.


My note: Can any of you imagine what a wave of heavy oil would do to commercial and recreational fishing on the flats and reefs of the Florida Keys?

This news was not a huge surprise: For days, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had predicted that thick oil might make landfall near here. These marshes are the closest land to the spot where the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig sank April 22.

But Louisiana officials said the oil's arrival underscored the need for their radical-sounding solution: the construction of a chain of small offshore islands to block the oil from the coast.

"This is the first time we've seen this much heavy oil this far into our wetlands," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) said at a news conference here in Venice, the last town before the coastal marshes begin. "We know there's a lot more heavy oil behind it that hasn't made it to shore yet."


You can bet Governor Jindal will continue to change his former anti-Federal posturing. He's already asked for 6000 troops to help fight the oil. With this arrival of heavy oil in critical wetlands, Jindal will be under pressure to ask for even more help from D.C.

How is BP's latest "straw in the broken pipe line" working? And what of their plans to stop the leak altogether? The WaPo continues:

Also Tuesday, BP said it was slowly increasing the amount of oil it was siphoning away from the leaking well, using a tube inserted into a broken-off pipe Sunday. BP said it was removing 2,000 barrels of oil a day from the leak, up from 1,000.

It's not clear how much of the spilling oil that represents: Officials had first estimated the leak at 5,000 barrels a day, but outside experts have said it appears much larger than that. Video of the leak, released by U.S. Sens. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), showed oil continuing to billow out of the leaking pipe, even with the siphon pipe inserted into it.

The company's plan to stop the leak involves pumping heavy "kill mud" at 40 barrels a minute into openings in the blowout preventer, a mechanism that surrounds the drill pipe. If the influx of mud does not clog the drill pipe, a BP spokesman said, the company could still use a "junk shot" later -- pumping larger debris such as golf balls and pieces of tire into the mechanism.

Mark Proegler, a BP spokesman, said the company had not used the mud-pumping technique earlier because it had to first gather data about pressures inside the blowout preventer. "It takes a while to gather the information we need," he said.

So far, officials said, the oil has not caused catastrophic damage on shore: Just 23 "oiled" birds have been found dead, in contrast to the tens of thousands killed by the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. But scientists are worried about vast areas of oil floating underwater, unseen.


Note: I find it interesting the WaPo is overlooking an increase in turtle deaths and how they did not mention the 6 dolphins washed upon a Mississippi shore a few days ago. Nevertheless, can you imagine what all the oil below the surface is doing to sea life habitat?

That worry was heightened by Monday's discovery in Key West. If the tar balls found there are determined to have come from the BP leak, that could mean some oil has made its way into the Inner Loop currents of the Gulf Stream. NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said that oil swept up in the current might take eight to 10 days to reach the Florida Keys.


Eight to ten days 'til we will know if its Armageddon time in the Florida Keys? Great way to start hurricane season, eh?

Exxon Mobil, meanwhile, said it had delayed plans to start drilling an exploration well this week in the Gulf of Mexico.


Thank Zeus for small favors.

18 May 2010

More Tar Balls Found Off Big Pine Key, Key West and Dry Tortugas

More tar balls were reported found today by National Park Rangers on the beach of Loggerhead Key in the Dry Tortugas. There was also a report of tar balls found up in Big Pine Key. Lastly, tar balls also washed up on Smather's Beach (seen in photo above) in Key West.

Still, officials are cautious in blaming these tar balls on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

CNN has the story:


Researchers: Unlikely Keys tar balls stem from Gulf oil spill

Tar balls found on a Florida Keys beach Monday, while not believed to be from a massive Gulf of Mexico spill, are nevertheless raising fears that oil will spread along the coastlines of Florida and beyond.

Researchers said it's unlikely -- although not impossible -- that the oil could have spread from the spill, off the coast of Louisiana, to the Keys so quickly. Additional tar balls were found on Keys beaches Tuesday, the Coast Guard said.

But they and federal officials seem to agree that a plume of oil is in the process of getting dragged into the Gulf of Mexico's Loop Current. The current flows through the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico, and then northward, where it loops southeast just south of the Florida Keys and travels to the west side of the western Bahamas, according to meteorologists.

A new tracking forecast prepared by four experts relying on five computer models shows that part of the oil may reach the Keys in five to six days and Miami five days after that, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, said in a statement Tuesday.

"While I always hope for the best, this is looking like really out-of-control bad," Nelson said.

The forecast cited by Nelson assumes the Loop Current's persistence and does not take into account dispersion and evaporation from the oil spill, CNN meteorologist Sean Morris said. It remains to be seen how much oil has entered the current. In addition, he said, "the Loop Current is much warmer than surrounding water, which would cause oil to evaporate at a greater rate than it is evaporating near the source of the spill."

(Note to readers of this blog: we have scientists already claiming oil entered the Loop Current days ago. At this time, there is much confusion on who to listen to, e.g., NOAA, NASA, BP, Scientists from myriad organizations and schools in Florida. To get a another feel on how contradictory reports are, read the Key West Citizen's "Experts Differ On Oil In Current")

The CNN story continues:

More tar balls were found in the Florida Keys on Tuesday, on beaches in Big Pine Key and Loggerhead Key and on Smathers Beach in Key West, the Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard said in a statement that it responded to the Florida Park Service report of 20 tar balls on the beach at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park on Key West about 5:15 p.m. Monday.

Samples of the tar balls were sent to a laboratory for analysis to determine their origin. The Coast Guard and NOAA will conduct shoreline surveys of the area Tuesday, the statement said. An aerial search of the area with a pollution investigator is also planned. The Coast Guard did not speculate on the source of the tar balls.

An undersea oil well has been gushing an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil a day (210,000 gallons) into the Gulf since late April, when the drill rig Deepwater Horizon blew up and sank about 40 miles off Louisiana. Some estimates have put the amount of oil spewing from the well far higher.

Samples taken by scientists offshore have raised concerns that large plumes of oil are settling below the surface. But federal officials said the results have not been fully analyzed.

Some of the oil has washed ashore on the Louisiana coast. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said Tuesday that the slick was 50 miles off the Mississippi coast.

Meteorologist Jeff Masters said Tuesday that based on satellite imagery, "the oil is definitely in the Loop Current. ... The only question is how much oil made it in."

NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said satellite imagery from Monday indicates that "the main bulk of the oil is dozens of miles away" from the Loop Current, but "a tendril of light oil has been transported down close to the Loop Current." The tendril's location shows that oil will probably be pulled into the Loop Current, if it has not already, she said.

So, a meteorologist reading satellite imagery says the oil has definitely entered the Loop Current.

On the other hand, an NOAA administrator says the satellite imagery shows the oil is dozen of miles away. Then the NOAA rep hedges her statement by saying oil will most likely be pulled into the current if it hasn't already. (The NOAA Administrator speaks well out of both sides of her mouth. She sounds like a waffling CNBC Economist.)

CNN continues:

Once in the current, the oil could reach waters near Florida in about eight to 10 days, she said.

Masters said that because parts of the Loop Current travel at speeds up to 4 mph, the earliest the oil could be near Florida is about four days.

Once the oil is in the Florida Straits -- waters between Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas -- onshore winds would be required to push it onto shore, along with oil getting into an eddy on the edge of the current, Lubchenco said.

During the time the oil travels to the area, she said, it would undergo the natural process of evaporation and dispersion and would change into tar balls.

Of the tar balls seen on Gulf Coast beaches thus far, some have been identified as stemming from the Deepwater Horizon spill, but others have not, Lubchenco said.

"I think it is safe to say that the tar balls washing ashore in the Florida Keys are an example of what might happen should oil become entrained in the Loop Current, and that that is the scenario that we will be anticipating and preparing for and will be tracking very, very carefully in terms of where the oil is relative to the Loop Current, and mobilizing resources," she said.

"The oil has been moved south by what we call a cyclonic eddy, an ocean eddy," said Nan Walker, an associate professor in Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences and director of its Earth Scan Laboratory. "It's as close as you can get without actually being in it."

The oil may not actually enter the Loop Current, as its speeds will keep it on the outside, but the current "is going to pull it all the way to Florida," Walker said.

However, the phenomenon does not explain the Key West tar balls, she said. It's possible that some oil previously moved eastward and became entrained in the Loop Current circulation. "Some of the shelf water has moved eastward and southward, but we can't actually see the oil [on images]," she said. "You can just see the motion of water."

Still, the timing "seems a little quick" for the oil to reach Florida, she said.

Here we go again with more scientists saying it could be Deepwater Horizon Oil, and then again, it might not be. When is one of them going to board a boat, get out there into the Loop Current, drift with it, take samples, report to land via radio or cellphone what they are finding?

"It's a surprise," Chanmin Hu, associate professor of optical oceanography at the University of Miami, said of the tar balls.

Imagery currently shows the oil touching the current, he said, and it will be dragged in. But "to me, there's no way the oil can move this fast to reach the Florida Keys already."

He noted that "the Gulf is full of oil," with many wells, and "maybe there's some deepwater currents that bring oil from somewhere else." Still, he agreed with Walker that the possibility the tar balls stemmed from the spill cannot be ruled out.

Masters also said he doubted that the Keys tar balls are from the oil spill. "There's oil all the time in the Gulf anyway, just from natural seeps," he said.

The oil might not actually make it to Florida, depending on current patterns, he said. "The currents right now in the Gulf of Mexico are changing rapidly, day by day. It's kind of an unstable situation."

Hu said scientists "do not have a very reliable, sophisticated 3-D model to capture what's going on on the ocean bottom." Most efforts have been concentrated on the surface of the water, he said, and different depths have not been observed.

Hu said he and other researchers will travel on Wednesday for the spot where the oil meets the Loop Current and will collect samples and measure water properties. However, he said, "the mystery of the Florida Keys tar balls will remain."

According to the NOAA website, tar balls are actually remnants of oil spills. When crude oil floats on the surface of the water, it changes and is torn by winds and waves into smaller patches covering a wider area. The oil undergoes a process called "weathering."

The lighter components of the oil evaporate, and heavier components are left behind. Some crude oils mix with water to form "an emulsion that often looks like chocolate pudding" that is thicker and stickier than the initial oil, NOAA said. "Winds and waves continue to stretch and tear the oil patches into smaller pieces, or tar balls." The tar balls can travel hundreds of miles, according to the website.


So, we are left to wonder who knows what? Has the oil already entered the Loop Current? If so, how fast is it traveling? Are these tar balls washing up on Keys beaches from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe? If so, does this mean more oil, unseen from planes and satellites above, is traveling below the ocean surface at deadlier rates of size and speed?

At least Hu and other researchers are going out into the Loop Current tomorrow to observe firsthand what is going on. After all, isn't that what the Scientific Method requires? First hand observations? Theories? Tests? Hypothesis?

Anyone telling you now the tar balls are definitely/definitely not from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe are as much in the dark as the scientists.

Stay tuned to find out the truth.



Jackass of the Week Brit Hume of Fox News Asks "Where's The Oil?"

Brit Hume is frontrunner for my "Jackass of the Week Award".

On Fox News there was this exchange between Hume, Juan Williams and Chris Wallace:

JUAN WILLIAMS: First of all, don't you think, this spill now is going to be in excess of what happened with Exxon Valdez.

BRIT HUME: Let's see if that happens. There's a good question today if you are standing on the Gulf, and that is: Where is the oil?

WILLIAMS: Where is the oil?

HUME: It's not on -- except for little of chunks of it, you're not even seeing it on the shore yet.

WALLACE: But there are some new reports that there are greater amounts of it on the ocean floor.

HUME: Oh, yes, that's true. But you know where the greatest source of oil that seeps into the ocean is? It's from natural seepage from subterreanean deposits. That's where most of it comes from, not from drilling accidents. So what's badly needed here is on our energy policy, and also on the realities of what really goes on when it comes to oil spillage.

WILLIAMS: But I think it will damage the environment in the gulf and damage tourism and damage fishing. I don't think there's any question this is in excess of anything we've previously asked the ocean to absorb.

HUME: We'll see if it is. We'll see if it is. The ocean absorbs a lot, Juan, an awful lot. The ocean absorbs a lot.

WILLIAMS: I think Rush Limbaugh went down this road, "The ocean can handle it." I think we have to take some responsibility for the environment and be responsible to people who live in the area, vacation in that area, fish in that area. It's just wrong to think, "You know what? Dump it on the ocean and let the ocean handle it."

HUME: Who said that? Who is saying that? No one's making that argument.




To which I say to Brit Hume, "Yo, Jackass, instead of using your biased editors to slice and dice your video, why not look at alternative media sources who don't slant the news through a myopic Fox News lense?"

If someone at Fox is reading this blog, please have Jackass Hume view the following video I put up on this blog just yesterday in "Raw Footage of the Gulf of Mexico Catastrophe". I'd like to ask Brit Hume when the last time he saw an "natural" oil seepage venting from the ocean floor which is spread out for thousands of square miles?

Hume, if Fox fires you for being too stupid . . . although that would be a stretch for a network which constantly distorts the truth . . . you can always hire on with a Big Oil member as a lobbyist for the industry.

Tar Balls Found Off Key West




Breaking in this morning's news:

Coast Guard: Tar balls found off Key West, Fla.

The Associated Press

KEY WEST, Fla. —

The U.S. Coast Guard says 20 tar balls have been found off Key West, Fla., but the agency stopped short of saying whether they came from a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Some 5 million gallons of crude has spewed into the Gulf and tar balls have been washing ashore in several states along the coast.

Scientists are worried that oil is getting caught in a major ocean current that could carry it through the Florida Keys and up the East Coast.

The Coast Guard saysthe Florida Park Service found the tar balls on Monday during a shoreline survey. The balls were 3-to-8 inches in diameter.

Coast Guard Lt. Anna K. Dixon said no one at the station in Key West was qualified to determine where the tar balls originated. They have been sent to a lab for analysis.

Nassim Taleb: "The Tumor Is Bigger"

Nassim Taleb, the visionary who wrote the book "The Black Swan" before the Credit Crash heard around the world, is back after a one year layoff. Taleb has been writing a new book. And now he tells us things are worse than ever before.

Taleb thinks we are heading for a hyper-inflationary world. He says all we've done is taken private debt and turned it into public debt, and everytime that has happened in History, all ends in disaster.

This is a ten minute video interview which will raise the hairs on your arms:











Taleb says what we need to do to correct our way is "Blood, sweat and tears." Or force our democracies into austerity as we've just forced upon the Greeks.

17 May 2010

CBS' 60 Minutes: "Deepwater Horizon's Blowout" ...Parts 1 & 2 . . . Plus 7 Extra Parts

Mike Williams, an electronics specialist on the Deepwater Horizon, explains what it was like to be at Ground Zero of the explosion. There is also an excellent explanation as to why the explosion happened, who is at fault, and who is examining this breathtaking evidence for the government.

p.s. This should load slowly as there are 9 videos in the queue:


Part 1

/
Watch CBS News Videos Online


Part 2


Watch CBS News Videos Online


Extras:


Extra #1 : "I'm gonna die right here."


Watch CBS News Videos Online


Extra #2 "As I got to the next door, it exploded."


Watch CBS News Videos Online


Extra #3 "It's a raging inferno..."


Watch CBS News Videos Online


Extra #4 "We are in bad trouble."


Watch CBS News Videos Online


Extra #5 "We're gonna burn up or we're gonna jump."


Watch CBS News Videos Online


Extra #6 "I must be dead."


Watch CBS News Videos Online


Extra #7 "Mike Williams On Andrea's Rescue"


Watch CBS News Videos Online

How The Loop Current Curves Around Florida

Will The Mssissippi Gulf Season Open As Planned?

Personally, I will not be eating any shrimp or other shellfish from the Gulf of Mexico until a bevy of scientists from NOAA and other environmental agencies in the Keys give an "all clear".

These Mississippi scientists, could they be too entwined with the "Drill, Baby, Drill" governor from the state of Mississippi?


Raw Footage Of The Gulf of Mexico Catastrophe

The few Florida Keys residents who are in denial about this oil spill should watch this entire video, which was not shot by a mass media outlet with Big Oil advertisers:

The Minerals Management Services And Big Oil Run Like Criminal Enterprises

There's just no way to explain the anger residents of the Florida Keys feel toward those most responsible for lax inspections and regulation of Big Oil in the Gulf Of Mexico.

Chief among the criminally negligent are the fat cat bureaucrats at the Federal Government's MMS (Minerals Management Services) who have neglected their duties.

From a New York Times article on May 13, 2010 headlined U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits we read the beginning of the article,

WASHINGTON — The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf.

Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day.

The Minerals Management Service, or M.M.S., also routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of certain drilling proposals in the gulf and in Alaska, according to a half-dozen current and former agency scientists.

Those scientists said they were also regularly pressured by agency officials to change the findings of their internal studies if they predicted that an accident was likely to occur or if wildlife might be harmed.

Under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Minerals Management Service is required to get permits to allow drilling where it might harm endangered species or marine mammals.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is partly responsible for protecting endangered species and marine mammals. It has said on repeated occasions that drilling in the gulf affects these animals, but the minerals agency since January 2009 has approved at least three huge lease sales, 103 seismic blasting projects and 346 drilling plans. Agency records also show that permission for those projects and plans was granted without getting the permits required under federal law.

“M.M.S. has given up any pretense of regulating the offshore oil industry,” said Kierán Suckling, director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group in Tucson, which filed notice of intent to sue the agency over its noncompliance with federal law concerning endangered species. “The agency seems to think its mission is to help the oil industry evade environmental laws.”

Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said her agency had full consultations with NOAA about endangered species in the gulf. But she declined to respond to additional questions about whether her agency had obtained the relevant permits.

Federal records indicate that these consultations ended with NOAA instructing the minerals agency that continued drilling in the gulf was harming endangered marine mammals and that the agency needed to get permits to be in compliance with federal law.

Responding to the accusations that agency scientists were being silenced, Ms. Barkoff added, “Under the previous administration, there was a pattern of suppressing science in decisions, and we are working very hard to change the culture and empower scientists in the Department of the Interior.”


Note to readers of this blog. I know some of you are joining Tea Baggers in shouting for shrinking government and less regulation. Please, re-read the beginning of this article above and tell me again why allowing big business to influence your thinking is making our world a better place to live.

The primary governmental agency responsible for leasing drilling areas to oil companies was in bed with Big Oil. They over-ruled scientists from NOAA. They steam-rolled warnings about dangers to the fragile Gulf eco-system.

The NY Times Article continues:

Managers at the agency have routinely overruled staff scientists whose findings highlight the environmental risks of drilling, according to a half-dozen current or former agency scientists.

The scientists, none of whom wanted to be quoted by name for fear of reprisals by the agency or by those in the industry, said they had repeatedly had their scientific findings changed to indicate no environmental impact or had their calculations of spill risks downgraded.

“You simply are not allowed to conclude that the drilling will have an impact,” said one scientist who has worked for the minerals agency for more than a decade. “If you find the risks of a spill are high or you conclude that a certain species will be affected, your report gets disappeared in a desk drawer and they find another scientist to redo it or they rewrite it for you.”

Another biologist who left the agency in 2005 after more than five years said that agency officials went out of their way to accommodate the oil and gas industry.

He said, for example, that seismic activity from drilling can have a devastating effect on mammals and fish, but that agency officials rarely enforced the regulations meant to limit those effects.

He also said the agency routinely ceded to the drilling companies the responsibility for monitoring species that live or spawn near the drilling projects.

“What I observed was M.M.S. was trying to undermine the monitoring and mitigation requirements that would be imposed on the industry,” he said.

MMS is a criminal enterprise with a governmental imprimatur, no less. Sociopaths inside MMS and in bed with Big Oil are working against interests of taxpayers and businesses whose livelihoods depend on clean water and abundant wildlife.

The NY Times article adds,

Aside from allowing BP and other companies to drill in the gulf without getting the required permits from NOAA, the minerals agency has also given BP and other drilling companies in the gulf blanket exemptions from having to provide environmental impact statements.

Much as BP’s drilling plan asserted that there was no chance of an oil spill, the company also claimed in federal documents that its drilling would not have any adverse effect on endangered species.

The gulf is known for its biodiversity. Various endangered species are found in the area where the Deepwater Horizon was drilling, including sperm whales, blue whales and fin whales.

In some instances, the minerals agency has indeed sought and received permits in the gulf to harm certain endangered species like green and loggerhead sea turtles. But the agency has not received these permits for endangered species like the sperm and humpback whales, which are more common in the areas where drilling occurs and thus are more likely to be affected.


Note to Watchworld readers: BP swore an oil spill of this size was "impossible". BP also appliied for permits which would damage such wildlife as green loggerhead turtles, but somehow its activities would not endanger endangered species such as sperm and humback whales.

Which leads this skeptic to ask BP, "Did you guys develop a method of seismic activity which harms turtles but not whales, and if so, why couldn't you develop one which did not harm any sea life? What do you guys have against turtles?"

Which is another way of saying, I don't believe a goddamn thing BP executives say to the press, nor should you.

These corporate criminals along with their criminal bureaucrats from the MMS need to be fired, tried and jailed.

That not a single MMS official or BP, Transocean or Halliburton Executive has not resigned over their collusive efforts to suborn lax government regulation of such dangerous activity as undersea drilling tells us they are all thinking, "Business as usual."

If Obama wants respect from Americns in Gulf states, he needs to start an investigation into MMS and Big Oil. And he needs to take a giant machete and chop off heads of the guilty.





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